An electronic document, be it a web page or an email message, often contains references to specific information entities in the real world, such as a phone number, an address, a product name or a movie title. While viewing the document, a reader may desire to learn more information with respect to a particular information entity and then decide the next move. For example, while reading an email message including a title of a newly released movie, the reader may prefer to have quick and easy access to reviews about the movie and even the movie's schedule at a nearby movie theater in case he or she decides to watch the movie. Therefore, it is desirable to have a system and method that automatically retrieves information related to an information entity identified in a document in advance and selectively displays some of the information when rendering the document.